


My Side of Mcgregor's

by archionblu



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Banter, Childhood, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George - Freeform, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, RandL as children, Snow Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13105722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archionblu/pseuds/archionblu
Summary: To assuage cabin fever over the winter break, Rhett and Link go exploring. Link is cold, and Rhett tells his friend all about the new book he's been reading.





	My Side of Mcgregor's

**Author's Note:**

  * For [one_true_houselight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_true_houselight/gifts).



> My secret santa gift for [one_true_houselight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_true_houselight/pseuds/one_true_houselight/works)! Requests were funny, banter, and RandL as kids (platonic). I hope I delivered. Thanks to [Rhinkhearted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinkhearted/pseuds/Rhinkhearted/works) for the encouragement when I was feeling dubious about my plot, and to [Kpuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kpuff/works) for the quick beta! 
> 
> Also Thank you especially to Sims and Ren for setting up this whole awesome thing, we love you so much <3

Christmas-time in Buies Creek was a strange dichotomy of excitement and boredom. On the one hand, there was no school. There was family from out of town, there was lots of food and presents, there was music and general cheer. On the other hand, there were a lot of stuffy adults who they had to be polite to and there was nothing to do.

But Rhett and Link were capable of anything, if they put their minds together. Even finding something to do on Christmas Eve in their stupidly small North Carolina town. 

It had snowed heavily the past couple of days, but that didn’t prevent Rhett and Link from going out and exploring. The house was too crowded, especially with Cole home from college lording his older-brother-ness over Rhett’s head at every opportunity. So they donned their winter gear, boots, thick pants, hats, and gloves before heading outside. 

The first thing they did was build a snowman to look like their math teacher Mr. Leibforth. They found sticks for his arms and pebbles for his small, beady eyes, and a piece of bark to represent the flat line of his unamused mouth. 

They took great fun in pelting Mr. Snow-Leibforth with snowballs, which quickly devolved into pelting _each other_ with snowballs. A truce was mutually called when Rhett took a snowball directly to the eye, tipping over backwards into the snow. He laid there for several long moments, to the point Link started to worry he might have actually hurt him, but the bigger boy just started flapping his long arms and legs, like a giant awkward bird and made a snow angel. Link laughed and flopped down to join him. 

They did everything it was possible for little boys to do in the snow--

“I think mine is better.”

“How is that even possible? My name is easier to write!”

“I’ve had more practice.”

“That’s lame, man. Who practices peeing in the snow?”

\--until they’d completely exhausted their list of winter activities. They’d sledded down the hill, they’d wrestled, they’d built an igloo. 

“Do you want to go back in?”

“Do you?”

“...Want to go to McGregor’s and check out the abandoned house instead?”

“Weren’t we avoiding that one because it’s, like, two seconds from falling over?”

“It’ll be _fine_ man. You worry too much. Let’s go.”

When they got past their neighbor Mcgregor’s house and onto the back ten-acre lot there to the abandoned cabin they had found last summer, Rhett had to admit at least to himself that maybe it was a bit more decrepit and dangerous-looking than he remembered. But hey-- what was life without a little adventure?

They had to crawl in through a window, Rhett pulling off one of the loose boards over the long-since broken panes. Inside it was dark, but that was normal for the places they like to explore. What was less normal was the way the ceiling was bowed in in the northwest corner of what they thought might have been the living room, so they endeavoured to stay away from that area. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave them a whole lot else to explore. 

As they poked through the empty cupboards in the small kitchen they talked about the things they had been up to since they saw each other last.

“I’ve been reading this super cool book, man. It’s called _My Side of the Mountain_. It’s all about this kid from New York who decides civilization is bullshit and that he’s gonna go live in the wilderness. Everyone doubts him and thinks he’s gonna come back home after a night or two but he sticks it out a whole year!”

“But why though? Like, I like camping and all, but I wouldn’t wanna do it full time. I like my bed too much!”

“Uh, because it’s cool? Because eventually society will collapse and there will be an apocalypse and Sam Gribley will totally survive when everybody else dies because he knows how to live off the land? I don’t know buddyroll, I don’t see why you _wouldn’t_ wanna do it!”

“Well, I always did say you were a bit odd in the head.” Link says, dodging Rhett’s exasperated shove. 

They’d just about exhausted all the nooks and crannies of the little cabin except for the corner with the sagging ceiling. The small bedroom had only a broken picture frame, but the kitchen cupboards had yielded a dead rat and an expired can of beans.

“I dare you to eat some.”

“No way! Besides, how are we supposed to open it?”

“You make a good point.”

Eventually Rhett’s eyes turned to the corner with the sagging ceiling. There was an unopened cabinet over there, and it was calling his name.

“Bo, I don’t know, maybe we should go. I don’t think that’s safe.”

“Don’t be such a coward! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Rhett managed one step towards the cabinet before there was an ominous creak and then a _**CRACK**_ as a beam broke and a huge section of the ceiling caved in over their heads, snow and splinters raining down around them. Rhett immediately grabbed for Link, wrapping his arms around the smaller boy. 

“Link?!? Link are you okay?” Rhett asked frantically, patting down every accessible inch of Link that he could reach as if he’d be able to feel anything through the approximately six layers of clothes Link was wearing.

Link’s voice was shaken, but he replied, “Yeah, yeah Bo I’m fine, just...startled, y’know. How about you, are you okay? Did you get hit with anything? You were covering me, you shouldn’t of done that man, You shoulda covered your own head, that’s what they taught us in school!” His hands were also smoothing over Rhett’s back and shoulders, but with less purpose than Rhett’s touches had. 

Rhett waved off Link’s scolding. “I’m fine, I gotta thick skull. It’s my job to look out for you, you’re younger after all.” 

“By _seven months_.”

Rhett ignored him. 

They looked around the small space the debris has formed around them. There was no way for them to get out; although they could see light high up above them and there seemed to be a decent amount of air flow, considering how the wind bit through their jackets. There were little piles of broken boards and splinters and chunks of ceiling plaster cluttered around them, one of the walls of the cabin still standing smooth and whole at Rhett’s back. There was also a lot of snow, which must have been what finally caused the old building to cave in. All that weight dumping down on an already unstable structure. 

“I freaking TOLD you man! I told you it wasn’t safe but you just _had_ to keep going, didn’t you? Always gotta be the cool guy, Always gotta go that little bit harder. Now what’re we gonna do?!? We’re freaking trapped! We’re gonna freeze to death out here!” Link waved his hands around, shouting at Rhett.

“Hey, hey, hey. Calm down, Bo. It’s alright. If Sam Gribley can survive a whole year and more out in the wilderness by himself, the two of us together can survive a couple of hours until someone realizes we’re gone and comes looking for us. When we don’t come back by dark like usual they’ll send out a search team, it shouldn’t take long after that.”

Link settled down on the floor facing Rhett and rested his chin on his knees. “...What did Sam do? Like how did he survive the snow and stuff?” 

“Hmmm, well, we already got the first step down. We’ve got shelter!” Rhett gestured around them at their little cubby. “It’s not the most secure or weatherproof, if we were gonna be here long-term we might wanna plug up the cracks with moss and make sure the roof is stable, maybe set up a chimney in that hole up there.” he pointed at the small opening where slanting golden light was filtering into their prison. “And then we’d have have to collect plants and trap animals and make clothes out of deerskin and stuff. But like I said, we aren’t gonna be here long enough for that.”

He hoped, anyway.

“Don’t we gotta build a fire, or something? Isn’t that part of winter survival? Shelter and heat? We’ve got plenty of wood, I know you got that lighter in your pocket. It’s not broken, is it?” Link asks anxiously, unfolding his legs and grabbing small pieces of board and piling them up haphazardly.

“Okay, wait, wait, wait, buddyroll. My lighter is fine, but dude you don’t know the first thing about making a fire. First of all you gotta have either a whole bunch of room so you don’t burn yourself or your shelter down or you gotta have it contained in like a fireplace or something, and we’ve got neither of those things. Second of all, You can’t just dump the stuff in all willy-nilly. Sam tried to do that in the book, and he ended up cold and hungry his first night even though he tried for _hours_. And third of all, this wood is all _wet_ man. How’re’ya gonna start a damn fire with wet wood, brother? Can’t do it. Just smokes.”

“I don’t care dude, I’m cold. Can we at least try? Please?” Link wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. 

Rhett sighed but set about arranging the smaller splinters of the drier wood into a neat little pyramid, wishing he had a flint and steel like Sam’s instead of the lighter. He’d have to get them sometime soon, after they got rescued. Maybe he could find them at the hardware store?

As Rhett predicted, the wood didn’t do much other than smoke, making them cough and cover their faces. Rhett used his hat to wave the smoke up towards the hole at the top and away from them until they could finally breathe again. 

“So much for that.” Link muttered.  
Rhett could see that he was still shivering, despite the physical activity. He also heard a tell-tale sniffle. Link tried to play it off as if it was just the cold, wiping at his nose and looking around casually, but Rhett knew better. 

Link was scared.

“Come over here, Bo.”

“What?” 

Rhett stretched his legs out in the small space, gesturing to the space in between them to indicate that Link should sit there. “We can huddle for warmth, man. I saw it on the TV. Body heat is key.”

Link hesitated but eventually decided that keeping warm was more important than avoiding any awkwardness that cuddling with his best friend might generate. They zipped their jackets together, Link leaning back against Rhett’s chest and Rhett’s arms around his middle inside their coats to create a cocoon of warmth.

“You know, in the book, Sam Gribley finds this hawk, or well, actually he steals it from its nest, and he trains it to be his hunting bird.”

“Really? You can do that? That’s cool. Did he name it anything?”

“Yeah, it’s called Frightful. He learned how to train it from a book in the library. There’s a nice lady there called Miss. Turner, and she’s one of the only people who actually believes him when he says he’s gonna live in the wilderness and doesn’t treat him like he’s some stupid kid. He reads lots of books at her library to learn how to live right.”

“Well at least he’s got one ally. It’s gotta be hard, not having anyone believe you like that.”

Rhett went on to tell him about the other characters that Sam meets, like Bill and Bando and Mr. Jacket. He told Link about Sam building his house in the old hemlock tree, making his deerskin clothes from the stolen deer, and Sam’s animal friends.

By the time Rhett got to the part of the story where Sam meets Matt Spell, the sunlight coming from the hole above them had long since gone, the pink light of sunset having faded into the dark grey of a cloudy evening. Rhett had just begun to worry about the steadily dropping temperature when he heard a voice a ways away, shouting their names.

“We’re in here! We’re trapped! We need help!” Link shot to his feet and pounded on the walls of their prison, temporarily forgetting he was zipped to Rhett and falling back over when he reached the limit of their cloth confinement. Rhett let out a quiet “Oof” as he caught his clumsy friend and helped to untangle the coats. 

Once they were free, Rhett put his hands to his mouth and yelled back, much louder than Link, “Cole? Is that you? We’re in the cabin, man! It collapsed on us!”

“Hold up, I’m coming, don’t move!”

They could hear Cole getting closer, and soon enough the light from Cole’s headlamp was shining into their cubby where Cole had shifted the boards apart. 

“What are you two idiots doing in here? We’ve been looking for you for hours, mom’s worried sick.”

“Well we didn’t do it on _purpose_ , shithead. The cabin collapsed on us! We coulda died!”

“Be glad you didn’t, momma woulda raised you from the grave just to put you back in one. She still might kill you both, honestly, for frightening her like this. Don’t even get me _started_ on Sue, she’s hysterical. Come on, let’s get you guys home and out of the cold.”

They climbed out of the ruins of Mcgregor’s cabin and tromped off after Cole, who complained the whole way home about everyone worrying about them and how he’d had to leave the nice warm house to come and look for their sorry asses, but it was clear that he had been just as worried about them. Rhett was touched by his concern, even if the complaining did get a little annoying after a while.

When they got back to Rhett’s house, their moms were indeed a little hysterical, and it took over an hour of apologies, explanations, scolding, and fussing before they were released from their mothers’ tender clutches. By that point, they had both changed into pajamas (Link’s pant legs dragging on the floor, since he’d had to borrow some from Rhett), wrapped in blankets, and stashed on the couch with mugs of hot cocoa. 

For awhile they just sat watching the TV and drank their hot cocoa, enjoying the silence now that the adults had satisfied their coddling instincts and retreated to other parts of the house. Eventually though the program couldn’t keep their attention and Link turned to Rhett.

“Rhett?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you tell me more about that story, _My Mountain_ or whatever it was?”

Rhett grinned at his friend and an overwhelming glow of fondness filled his chest. Taking a sip of his cocoa, he picked up where he’d left off, continuing the story, weaving the tale as best he could for his curious friend. They talked late into the night, forgetting all about the cold outside.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed this little bit of fluff, and if you haven't read _My Side of the Mountain_ by Jean Craighead George, I HIGHLY recommend it. 
> 
> As always, thank you for commenting, liking (and subscribing ;))!


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